Sculpture Of Courage

Scott's Arctic Expedition Inspires Fictional Account

Nothing punishes like the cold. If you doubt this, remember how miserable you felt just a few months ago when winter seemed endless.

Not surprisingly, some modern fiction writers have found that they can map the terrain of the human soul more accurately at horribly low temperatures, when body and mind move in slow motion.

English author Beryl Bainbridge does this skillfully in "The Birthday Boys," a fictional account of Robert Falcon Scott's disastrous expedition to the South Pole in 1912.

Scott and each of the four men who will die with him tell part of the story of their doomed project. Despite differences of personality and background, they share the naive bravery of overgrown boys on a great adventure-boyish enough to remember their birthdays even under the most desperate conditions. Hence, "The Birthday Boys."

Imbued with all the robust self-confidence of pre-World War I England, they are men who live by a code of sportsmanship. Winning is not the most important thing; honor is. And they would politely brush aside a helping hand, certain that success counts only if achieved under the most formidable odds.

"The world is changing, and soon the machine will be of more importance than the body," observes the most boyish of the birthday boys, Lt. Henry Robertson "Birdie" Bowers. He marvels that "it's tremendous luck to have been born into the last few seconds of an epoch in which a man is still required to stand up and be counted."

She uses Petty Officer Edgar "Taff" Evans, a blustering drinker and spinner of tales, to tell us what real cold is all about:

"To be cold is when . . . the mercury freezes in the thermometer. Petrol won't burn . . . and even an Eskimo dog can't work, because its lungs will stop functioning," Evans says, recalling an earlier trip to Antarctica.

To survive under those conditions, the members of the expedition must rely on the leadership of Scott. And Scott, though brave and conscientious, is unequal to the task.

Scott's worst decision is to disregard the conventional wisdom on Antarctic travel and use ponies rather than sled dogs to haul the expedition's supplies. The dogs-snarling, vicious and always ready to fight-offend Scott's sense of propriety. The ponies flounder in the deep snow and their failure cripples the expedition.

Whatever his deficiencies as a leader, Scott is a relentless competitor. "For Scott, there was no such word as impossible, or if there was, it was listed in a dictionary for fools," observes another member of the expedition, the stiff-necked Capt. Lawrence Edward "Titus" Oates.

When the English explorers arrive at the South Pole, they find that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen has beaten them by about a month.

"We took a photograph of ourselves," Oates tells us. "I don't think any of us had the heart to smile. Then we started for home."

Bainbridge creates images that are startling, beautiful, haunting. Evans, who has fallen into a crevasse and is dangling by the traces of the sledge he has been pulling, tells us: "I was scared for my life, but at the same time I couldn't help noticing how bright everything was, the ice not really blue at all but shot through with spangled points of rosy light so dazzling that it made me crinkle up my eyes as though I had something to smile about."

While the principal characters are skillfully drawn, Bainbridge doesn't quite pull off the five different voices. Each narrator sounds like the same person affecting five different accents.

But that's a small flaw, and it doesn't detract from Bainbridge's accomplishment. She has created an elegant ice sculpture of courage, loyalty and brotherly love.